Deborah Cole

The American military presence in Germany is only to defend Germans and Europeans.

And that is far from the case.

I mean, as we're seeing right now in the Iran war, Rammstein and the other bases are extremely important as part of this military operation and just in general.

It is, you know, sort of a forward launching pad, essentially, for military operations in Africa, you know, in the Middle East.

We mentioned Afghanistan.

I mean, I've been based in Germany for a long time.

And, you know, it used to be down in Stuttgart, which is where the European command is based.

It's also where the U.S.

Africa command is based and go to briefings with the Supreme Allied commander there.

you know, constantly because everything was being planned, for example, after 9-11 in Afghanistan and then later in Iraq, you know, from patch barracks in Stuttgart, Germany.

So there's a whole sort of infrastructure that has been built up over decades.

And so the idea that you could sort of just toss this out the window and still have the same projection of American power throughout this enormous region is completely illusory.

Well, again, we have sick historical perspective on all of this.

I mean, the horror unleashed by Nazi Germany and its military.

is a memory that is very much still alive in Europe.

And so the whole idea was to allow Germany to return to a certain economic strength, but also at the same time restrain any sort of military ambitions it could ever have again.

And it also bred a pacifist streak in the population.

You know, the sort of never again among Germans was taken very seriously for a long time.

And they saw it as part of their identity, this absolute rejection of the Nazi past.

So then as time went on, more and more American presidents, however, started seeing all of this German economic strength that wasn't being backed up with investment in its own military.